Aloha! And welcome to LEGENDARY
SURFERS! In this chapter, we cover Surf Wear -- so to speak:

surf trunks or surftrunks:
n. A swimsuit designed especially for surfing; made of heavy-duty fabric,
double stitched, with a pocket for a bar of wax in the rear.

jams: n. Very
colorful swim trunks, almost knee-length and usually loose to the point
of bagginess. Dave Rochlen started the jams trend in the early 1960s with
the original Surf Line Jams, which were brightly colored Hawaiian-print
trunks, cut just above the knee; every surfer wore them (GN).

baggies or baggys: n.
Large, over-sized, loose-fitting, boxer-type swim trunks that are considerably
longer in the legs than regular surf shorts and are worn by surfers for
a show or comfort; usually made of Hawaiian print (IDSM).

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There’s this line from an old 1960s advertisement
for surf trunks -- “The sport’s seminal piece of tribal garb, a ritual
costume that has singularly defined a culture.” -- “It calls surf
trunks the last thing you think about and the first thing you grab,” recalled
Kanvas by Katin‘s Rick Lohr. “It’s still that way. And the trunks really
haven’t changed that much. Colors may come in and go out of style. The
fit might change a little bit. But the bottom line is... Next to our surfboards,
they are the closest thing to surfing that we own.”

From
Nudity to Skirts

Although surf wear is now a multi-million dollar
business within an industry in large part fueled by the sale of clothes
for surfers and those who want to look like surfers, surfing attire has
not always been around. Believe it or not, when surf wear first began,
its implementation was controversial. The evolution of surf trunks, particularly,
was a gradual thing -- just like the evolution of surfboards themselves;
highly responsive to the particular needs of the surfing lifestyle.

In pre-missionary Hawai`i
and Polynesia, there was no such thing as clothing to wrap the surfer in.
Ancient surfers -- men, women and children -- surfed in the nude. Sometime
between
1830 and the late 1880s, “probably due to missionary influence, early
surf trunks took the form of loin cloths“ in Hawaii. By the turn of the
century, wrote 1960s surfing champion Nat Young, “In Australia, where the
life saving movement was just beginning, tank tops were popular.”

The issue of nudity being the first controversy
over surfing attire, or lack thereof, the second one occurred in Australia,
in 1907, at Waverly, Randwick and Manly beaches. Although stand-up board
surfing was yet to arrive, Australians were getting serious about body
surfing. The mayors of these communities issued “a directive that all bathers,
irrespective of sex, had to wear skirts!” Marveled Nat Young in his History
of Surfing. “This was provoked by the fact that men were lying on the
beach wearing V trunks and women were wearing light, gauzy material which
when wet clung too closely to be ‘decent!’ The councils decreed that surfers
should wear a costume which consisted of ‘a guernsey with trouser legs,
reaching from the elbow to the bend of the knee, together with a skirt,
not unsightly, attached to the garment, covering the figure from hips to
knees’... both sexes had to be covered apron-fashion.

“Needless to say, the bathing public would
have none of this. In order to mock the regulations the bathers organised
a march from Bondi to the city, with a dead seagull on a stick as a banner.
Many men wore petticoats, some with yards of lace and embroidery trailing
in the dust behind. Some wore red flannels; others decorated themselves
with ballet frills around their bulging bellies. A few wore chaff bags
with the ends lopped off or kitchen curtains. It was a hilarious occasion,
with the law flaunted once again; after that the Australian authorities
fell in with what was being worn in Europe and America, and local surfers
wore woolen neck-to-knee costumes.”

From
Woolens to Cutoffs

After this, the 1900s was relatively quiet
when it came to swim suits -- that is, if you discount the arrivals of
the bikini, in the early 1960s, and the butt thong in the 1980s!In the early 1900s,
Malahini (tourist) surfers sported woolen tank-suit styles popular at Waikiki.
Around 1935, at Waikiki, “Bathing-style” trunks were popularized by surfing
pioneer and innovator Tom Blake and Olympic
champion Johnny Weismuller. Narrow, rigid waistband and two-inch inseams
were the features of these early precursors of the modern surf trunk.
In the 1940s, surf trunks were featured on the cover of Vogue magazine
in an action shot from Hawai`i. Duke Kahanamoku,
“The Father of Surfing,” traded his older style Olympic swim suits
for short trunks, some of which were beginning to be sewn with drawstrings
attached, to aid the wearer in turbulent surf conditions.

According to big wave surfer Greg
“Da Bull” Noll, the late 1940s was when the true surf trunk was worn,
first at the Manhattan Beach Surf Club, Manhattan Beach, California. “The
long boardshorts or baggies that surfers wear today probably can be attributed
to coming out of a contest that Dale Velzy, Barney
Briggs and a couple of other guys decided to hold,” Noll recalls. “They’d
go to the Salvation Army shop, buy white sailor pants and cut them off
just below the knees. They lived in these pants. By nature, anyone living
the kind of bohemian lifestyle that Velzy and the others did would be pretty
scroungy and dirty. Being in the water so much, they actually stayed pretty
clean.

“The rule governing this contest was that you
had to live in these cutoffs day after day, surfing, dating, whatever.
You could only unzip them in the presence of your girlfriend or to go to
the bathroom. Then the pants could come down to your knees. Otherwise,
they had to stay on your body. I think the contest went on for about
a month before Barney gave up and Velzy was finally declared the winner.”

M. Nii,
H. Miura Trunks

In the early 1950s, H. Miura General Store
began selling surfers school gym shorts with stripes down the leg in school
colors. Red and white Wailua High colors were considered “very cool.”

1960s champion surfer Mike Doyle remembered,
“The first modern-style surf trunks I ever saw were made by a little Filipino
who had a tailor shop at Waianae, south of Makaha. His name was M. Nii.
The surfers at Makaha were always going in there to get their torn trunks
mended, and this fellow realized there was a market for a better surf trunk.
So he started making his own. In the island tradition of colorful silk
shirts, he started experimenting around with bright and exotic colors,
different panels in varying colors, a wax pocket in back, and surfer stripes
down the sides. Before long the M. Nii trunks became famous. Every surfer
who went to Hawaii had to have a pair of M. Nii trunks, and more often
than not, he had a whole list of orders for M. Nii trunks from his friends
back home.”

By 1952, most California surfing transplants
were buying custom-made surfing trunks from M. Nii’s in Waianae. Nii’s
“Makaha Drowner“ is considered by many to be the first, true surf trunk.
Greg Noll confirmed the value of M. Nii surf trunks. “When we first went
to the Islands, these pants [M. Nii’s custom-made surftrunks] were kind
of a trendy deal. You see us wearing them in a lot of the old pictures.
Eventually, we started going to M. Nii’s in Wainae and having white shorts
made with stripes down the side and a pocket for our board wax. That was
a big deal, to go to Hawaii and have M. Nii make your surftrunks. They
caught on everywhere we went and were prized on the Mainland. We’d bring
M. Nii’s trunks back to our friends.”

Beach
Mothers

Back on 1950s Mainland USA, there were no commercial
surf trunks. As Mike Doyle continued, “When I first started surfing there
was no such thing as surf trunks. We used to wear boxer shorts. We thought
it was really cool to buy them about ten-inches too big in the waist so
when we stood on the nose of the board, our shorts would fill up with air
like big balloons. I don’t know why we thought that was cool, but the point
was we were making our own fashion statement. When I was a kid surfing
at Malibu, my mother made my surf trunks out of awning canvas. They were
nearly indestructible and way ahead of their time: purple and black,
with diamonds down the side, or quarter panels in different colors. Other
surfers were always asking me, ‘Where’d you get your trunks?’

“Years later Steve Pezman, who was the publisher
of Surfer magazine, told me, ‘You know, OP made millions of dollars
selling surf trunks, and all they did was copy the trunks your mother made
for you on her little treadle machine.’“

About the same time as the first commercial
polyurethane foam boards became commercially available (1957), more and
more beach mothers took to sewing their sons custom trunks -- not only
Mrs. Doyle, but Mrs. Takayama, Plaudette Reed and Nancy Katin, among others.

Plaudette Reed was the wife of Bob Reed, City
of Newport Beach Lifeguard Chief. They lived in an oceanfront house right
on the strand in Newport. If you had a pair of custom trunks from one of
the mothers, “it put you on another level from the guys with cut-off Levi’s
or a pair of their dad’s plaid baggies (however, these were close).”
Newport Beach gremmies would go over to Mrs. Reed’s, she’d measure waist,
inseam, etc. Young surfers would select fabric and color. A few weeks later,
she’d have them cut out and pinned together “and she’d make you put ‘em
on and correct the fit so they were perfect. You could custom design your
own trunks any way you wanted.”

“I remember Bob Beadle divided his legs and
waistband into quarter panels of alternating red and green canvas,” said
Allan Seymour. “My deal was to have my trunks made from solid navy blue
material with the inside of my wax flap and inside waistband bright orange.
Were we cool or what?” The trunks were generally made of a sturdy canvas
duck material that started out real stiff, but over time, softened to just
perfect. This being way before velcro was invented, they featured lace
closures on the waistband that could be left insolently untied and hanging
open, and covered button flys. The wax pocket came with a button-down flap
to hold your paraffin. To make each pair of Mrs. Reed‘s trunks truly custom,
she would embroider your name on a patch inside the pocket flap.

“In the Spring of 1961,” recalled Seymour,
“the surf cultures of San Clemente and Newport Beach were at the opposite
ends of the economic spectrum. Someone once said that if your dad had a
steady job in San Clemente he was an overachiever. In contrast, the Velzy-Jacobs
shops in San Clemente did a thriving business. A large part of the clientele
were rich kids from Newport Beach. They drove Porsches, wore new Pendleton’s
and real Levi’s. We San Clemente kids thought they got the leather shoes
they wore at bowling alleys, when actually they were very expensive elk
hide yachting shoes. But the Mrs. Reed custom trunks were what really made
the best surfers from Newport special.”

Katins

Nancy Katin was the most famous of all the
beach moms who sewed surf trunks. Mike Doyle tells her story: “Across the
street from Corky [Carroll] lived Nancy and Walt Katin, who had a business
making boat covers out of heavy-duty industrial canvas. Walt was a classic
boat guy. He was short, robust, and wore powder-blue jumpsuits zipped up
to the neck. He had a big salt-and-pepper beard and always wore a captain’s
hat with a gold anchor on the black plastic brim. And he was happy all
the time. Nancy was a little eighty-nine-pound lady who chain-smoked --
very nervous and excitable, but clear as a bell and the sweetest woman
I ever met. Like her husband, she was happy all the time.

“The Katins had no children of their own, but
they loved kids, and they always made Corky feel welcome at their place.
One day Corky asked Nancy if she would make him a pair of surf trunks out
of boat canvas. He explained that swim trunks wouldn’t hold up to the stress
of surfing -- usually they would just rip out in the seat or the crotch.

“Nancy had heavy-duty sewing machines and used
hundred-pound-test, waxed-nylon thread. She knew how to sew things that
would last. So she said, ‘Sure, Corky, let’s give it a try.’

“Nancy sewed him a pair of red trunks out of
sixteen-ounce drill canvas. She sewed them the same way she sewed her boat
covers: with zigzag stitching, double and even triple seams. Corky
loved them, but they were so stiff that every time he took them off, he
just stood them up in the corner of his room. He wore them for two years
before they broke in enough that they wouldn’t stand up by themselves.
And after three years, he was still wearing them.

“Before long, hundreds of local surfers were
coming to Nancy Katin and asking her if she would make them a pair of surf
trunks just like Corky’s. The Katins’ boat cover business was rapidly turning
into a surf trunk business. It was all word of mouth, no advertising, a
walk-in business, no mail order. They called it Kanvas by Katin, and there
wasn’t anything else like it in California. Over the next four years, Nancy
and the two Japanese ladies who worked for her made thousands of pairs
of surf trunks. For surfers, Kanvas by Katin was legendary.”

Later on, in the mid-1960s, Catalina sportswear
bought-out the Katin business. Mike Doyle revealed that, “Back at the time
when Catalina bought out Kanvas by Katin, I considered that deal to be
a good thing. It gave Nancy Katin a good retirement after years of hard
work, and it helped the Catalina label, too, by associating it with a quality
product. Eventually, though, I realized that Catalina wanted the Katin
name for the same reason they wanted my name: as a marketing gimmick. Right
away they started making junky trunks and putting the Kanvas by Katin label
on them. To surfers everywhere, Katin had meant quality, and almost overnight
Catalina trashed the Katin name.

“Nancy Katin was heartbroken when she realized
what had happened. Her husband was gone, her business was gone, the kids
who had come to her from the beach were gone. Even her name was gone. She
had nothing left. But that gutsy little woman surprised us all. She paid
Catalina double what they’d paid her, just to get her name back. Then she
went back to making quality trunks. Before long the kids started coming
back, she had her extended family again, and she was happy.”

Birdwell
Britches

Following fast upon the heels of the Katins
going commercial in 1959 was Birdwell Beach Britches, also manufacturing
trunks in Southern California out of sail cloth. Yet, even as late as 1961,
many surfers were still opting for “home-made” trunks over the brands that
were established and those in the process of establishing themselves.

Da
Bull’s Striped Trunks

The most famous single pair of surf trunks
from this era was undoubtedly those black and white striped trunks worn
by Greg Noll. Da Bull had had them made as “a gag” and they caught on,
becoming Noll’s trademark of the period.

Hang Ten

In 1962, Duke Boyd
and Doris Moore formed the Hang Ten label, in Long Beach, California. Some
innovations followed, including the first use of nylon fabrics. The same
year, Ricky Grigg became the first surfer to secure an endorsement deal
with a surf trunk manufacturer, signing a sponsorship agreement with Jantzen.

Dave
Rochlen Invents Jams/Baggies

Jams, or Baggies, were a later development
that began in 1963. Mike Doyle recalls
that, “In December of 1963, I was back in Hawaii again, getting ready for
that year’s Makaha. The morning of the contest, I was surfing at a little
beach break at Pokai Bay (south of Makaha), just warming up before heading
over to the contest. As I came out of the water, Dave
Rochlen came walking down the beach. Dave, who was about fifteen years
older than I was, had been a lifeguard at Santa Monica, was a respected
big-wave rider and somebody I’d always looked up to. He’d been kind
of a playboy in his younger days (he dated Marilyn Monroe before she became
a famous movie star), but when he went to the islands he fell in love with
a Hawaiian woman. I remember him telling me that when he saw her surfing
one day, he just knew he had to have her. He ended up marrying the woman,
having kids and settling down there in the islands.

“Anyway, what really caught my attention on
this particular day was that Rochlen was wearing these great big, floral-patterned
surf trunks, like big baggy sacks with a draw string. They were like a
cross between a Hawaiian muumuu, and extra-large boxer shorts. I liked
them right away -- they really made me laugh. So I called out to him, ‘Dave,
what the hell are you wearing?’

“Rochlen looked at me, then down at his baggies.
He had a funny way of talking with gestures -- rolling his head, squishing
his neck, tilting his shoulders -- like he had to feel every word before
he could let it out. ‘These are my new jams!’

“I’d never heard the word before -- jams. ‘Well,
those are really cool,’ I said.

“Dave acted surprised. ‘You really think so?’
He stripped them off right there -- he had a pair of briefs on underneath
-- and handed them to me. ‘Here, they’re yours. First pair I ever made.’

“I wore Rochlen’s jams around for a long time.
They were comfortable, and they were so wild they made an anti-fashion
statement, which I believe was the beginning of surf fashion.

“Not long after that, Dave created one of the
first surfwear companies, and called it Surf Line Hawaii. He registered
the trademark, Jams, and came out with an entire line of his floral baggies.”

Greg Noll also remembered Dave Rochlen starting
“the Jams trend. Jams were –– and still are –– brightly colored,
Hawaiian-print trunks, cut just above the knee. Every surfer wore them.
Rochlen’s company, Surf Line Hawaii, originally started out as a surf shop
in Honolulu that was owned by Dick Metz. Now it’s a big international clothing
company. The original Surf Line Jams came on strong again a few years ago
with the surfing crowd.” Noll was quick to remind everyone, however, that
“the first surfwear trend started with the cutoff sailor pants worn by
Velzy and his cohorts at the Manhattan Beach Surf Club.”

Mike
Doyle & Commercial Surf Trunks

Mike Doyle was intimately involved with the
beginning commercialization of surf trunks. He put it this way: “The
first mass-manufactured surf trunk was made by Hang Ten, started by Duke
Boyd, an advertising man who was one of the first to realize that the whole
surf trend had marketing power. He advertised his first trunks in Surfer
Magazine, and I was one of the models.

“Hang Ten started out selling their clothes
in the surf shops until they’d established an identity in the surf community;
then they expanded to bigger clothing stores and, finally, to the major
retailers. Hang Ten became a very big company by springboarding off the
surfer image.

“Of course, surfers were into anti-fashion,
and as soon as Hang Ten became popular with non-surfers, surfers stopped
wearing their trunks. But Hang Ten didn’t care. They came out with matching
tops and bottoms, which surfers wouldn’t be caught dead in, and used their
surfing image to market a whole line of clothes in the Midwest and the
East.

“After that, surf trunk manufacturers started
popping up all over the place...”

Meanwhile, in 1964,
The
Endless Summer was released, its day-glo poster demonstrating both
the proper style of wearing surf trunks and establishing them as a new
social statement.

But, “the surfing image wasn’t always the path
to riches,” reminds Mike Doyle. “Some beachwear companies failed
miserably at trying to capitalize on it, and for several years I worked
for one of them.

“Catalina Swimwear was an old, established
company that had been into casual clothing for years. Their market had
always been the older, East Coast, mom-and-pop crowd. They had what they
called a cruise line, which was the kind of thing retired people would
wear on a two-week cruise through the Caribbean. Catalina realized early
on the potential that the surf trend had in the clothing industry, and
they were determined to try to stay with the times, which meant designing
for younger people.“Catalina got their foot in the door of the
surf trend when they sponsored the Long Beach Surf Club at the Peruvian
International. After that, Catalina started looking for a surfer to promote
their swimwear, and they eventually chose me. Right away they started making
Mike Doyle-model surf trunks. At first I had no say in the design process
-- I just wrote a little blurb for the hang tag and signed my name to it.

“In the spring of 1965... Catalina sent me
on a promotional tour called ‘Make It with Catalina.’ They put me on a
fat salary with an expense account and hired Bruce Brown, the maker of
Endless Summer, to create a seven-minute promo film. I spent the next four
months traveling through California, the Midwest, Texas, Florida, and the
East Coast, bird-dogging for Catalina...”

While on the promotional, Doyle discovered
that the Catalina surf trunks weren’t worth a shit. His subsequent experience
with corporate sportswear giant Catalina became a wake-up call. Doyle remembered,
“As soon as I got back... I called up the president of Catalina, Chuck
Trowbridge, and told him I didn’t think Catalina’s surf trunks were any
good. I told him they were using cheap zippers and flimsy nylon, and the
seams wouldn’t hold up to the stress of knee paddling. I told him it was
a lousy product that would rip out in the ass every time. And I tried to
explain to him how their sense of design was killing them with surfers
-- that only kooks would wear matching trunks and shirts.

“... Trowbridge called a meeting of the Catalina
board of directors to hear what I had to say. I told them everything I’d
already told Trowbridge, then I said, ‘I know you can make a strong pair
of surf trunks, because Nancy Katin is doing it right now.’

“Later on, Trowbridge drove down to see Nancy
Katin. Not long before, Walt Katin had passed away and Nancy had been devastated.
Nancy survived the loss of her husband because the young surfers who came
to see her every day had become her children, her extended family. Anyway,
when Chuck Trowbridge saw what Nancy Katin had done with her business,
he liked it so much he offered to buy her out. And Nancy, perhaps thinking
it was time for her to retire, agreed to sell Kanvas by Katin to Catalina.”

After the First Duke Invitational, Doyle went
to Catalina a second time. “That spring I did the Catalina East Coast promo
tour again... After I got back... I talked to Chuck Trowbridge again and
explained how I thought Catalina could improve their line of swimwear to
appeal to young people. He seemed interested in my comments, and that summer
he hired me to help Catalina design their swimwear...

“I found out right away how frustrating it
could be. One day I went in to see Catalina’s pattern maker. I took along
a pair of M. Nii surf trunks because I wanted him to see how well they
fit. The M. Niis were patterned after what’s called a ‘young man’s fit,’
meaning the front of the waistband is about an inch and a half lower than
the back, like a pair of jeans. But the pattern maker was sort of an Old
World tailor who had been doing the same gentleman’s cut for so long he
couldn’t change. I’m sure he understood what I was talking about, he just
wasn’t willing to consider doing things any differently. Swimwear had to
have a waistband like a pair of baggy trousers. It was my first lesson
in corporate paralysis.”

Although nylon has endured as a viable fabric
for surf trunks, early editions of the nylon trunk were nowhere near what
they are, today. Doyle recalled, “I didn’t like the idea of surf trunks
made of nylon, which was what Catalina was using at the time. Nylon might
have looked like a space-age fabric, but surfers knew it felt awful in
the water. So I found some great industrial-grade canvas. It was made of
100 percent cotton, had a nice texture, and felt comfortable wet. Best
of all, it was so strong you could make a pair of surf trunks that would
last forever.

“When I showed the fabric to Chuck Trowbridge,
his response was, ‘How much does it cost?’

“‘Forty cents a yard.’

“‘We don’t buy that cheap,’ he said. ‘We usually
spend four times that much.’

“‘But if it’s better quality, why not buy cheaper?’

“‘We just don’t do things that way.’

“That was my second lesson in corporate paralysis.

“I had more success getting Catalina to beef
up their stitching. But I had no luck trying to explain why surfers would
never buy matching trunks and nylon jackets. I wrote a twenty-page analysis
of where the youth movement was going and how that would affect the clothing
market, how young people were wearing natural fibers because cotton looked
and felt real, while nylon had something phony about it.

“‘But surfers are just a little bit ahead of
them,’ I said. ‘Believe me, the Midwest is going to like cotton trunks,
too.’

“‘Uh-huh... Well, thank you, Mike. We’ll talk
it over, and let you know what we think.’

“By this time I’d begun to see that Catalina
didn’t really want me involved in the design of their swimwear. What they
wanted was to be able to say they had a real surfer involved in their design.
It was just a marketing angle. The problem was that I really did become
involved. I got interested in the fabrics and the design process and the
quality control and the marketing -- I craved the creativity. And I felt
an obligation to help deliver an honest product to the surf community.

“After several months of work, I went before
the Catalina review panel to show them the line I’d designed. They were
all sitting there smoking cigars... I showed them how I’d changed the cut
on the trunks for a younger man. I showed them how I’d double-stitched
the seat and used overlocking stitching in the crotch. I showed them how
I’d switched from nylon to cotton.

“They all gave me a screwy look, then Chuck
said, ‘Gee, Mike. It looks a little wild.’

“I took a deep breath and began pleading my
case. ‘Surfers are open to new ideas,’ I said. ‘They don’t care what middle-aged
men in New York or Miami are wearing. They’re going their own way.’

“Then Chuck Trowbridge spoke the words that
ended my corporate career. ‘Mike,’ he said, ‘there’s something you have
to understand. We aren’t really selling to surfers. That’s not our market.
What we’re doing is selling the surfer image.’

“I knew then it was hopeless. Not only did
they fail to understand what I was trying to tell them, that the surf market
would lead them to the future of their industry, but they were using my
name to promote an inferior product. I said, ‘Well, you’ve got the wrong
guy then, because all this time I’ve been trying to design a real product
for real surfers.’

“And I walked away. A lot of people in the
surf industry thought I was a fool for leaving Catalina. It was a pretty
sweet job for a young man just twenty-four years old, and if I’d milked
it for ten years or so, I might have become fairly wealthy... Catalina
swimwear, which had been a giant in the industry, went out of business
eventually. When authentic surfwear companies started popping up out of
garages all over Southern California, pushing tough, creative, innovative
beachwear, Catalina got eaten alive.”

A
View From San Diego

In 1998, Bill Andrews sent me the following
email about the early days of the surfwear industry from a San Diego perspective:

“I grew up at La Jolla Shores. Had to suffer
the abuse of being a Shores Guy, while attending La Jolla Junior Senior
High School, class of ‘62. Actually have a photo of my first wave (‘58
La Jolla Shores, taken by Tom Clark’s mother ), worked for Gordon and Smith,
Surfer Mag, Nat Norfleet... The real surfers at ‘The High School’ (La Jolla
Jr. -- Sr. High) were turned on to a tailor in Pacific Beach, next to PB
Jr. High, who made canvas trunks. Must have been about 1960. All trunks
were custom made, pick your own fabric. My mother drove us there. We prayed
we wouldn’t run into Butch or any of the other WindanSea crowd. The same
story as ‘Up North.’ Stripes, etc. I can not remember how we closed them.
Certainly not velcro.

“We Shores Guys, (The Burro, Magoo, The Grub,
Bull Neck) had to get the best. The Grub, who had an older ‘big wave rider’
brother, said our trunks had to be really sturdy, because that’s what the
Hawaiians wore. Our canvas trunks were made out of the super awning canvas.
4,000 wearings and were still stiff as a board. Crotch rot or not, we had
to wear them.”

“Another caveat to those who want to become
big shots in the ‘hard core surf biz”:

“Back, late 60’s early 70’s, my store -- The
Pacific Beach Surf Shop – was the largest single store customer for Ocean
Pacific. Since I had been in ‘surf’ retail long before the rise and fall
of Hang Ten, (and by the way, Gary Bates sure got screwed by them) I was
fully prepared to take a wait and see attitude with OP.

“[Later on, after I stocked OP sportswear,]
I heard a rumor that OP was going into the Broadway Stores in SoCal. I
told JJ and Henry, that the day OP sold to Broadway, was the day their
stuff went out into the street. I said I’d rather let the Hell’s Angels
(including Shorty), and the other derelicts that hung around the foot of
PB Drive, have the stuff than sell a ‘surf trunk’ that was also sold in
Broadway. The day the full page OP/Broadway ads hit, was the day the OP
stuff went out into the rain.”

“Before ‘Balsa Bill’ Yerkes started Sundek
on the East Coast, Yerkes and Larry Gordon, with a touch of Floyd Smith
(and the Maine babe), designed and made the finest surf wear ever sold
on the West Coast: TURTLE KING and WAVE WEAR. The names said it all.

“Pacific Beach Surf Shop became the Beta Test
Site...maybe JJ was even a sales rep for Yerkes? And then Yerkes bailed,
OP began. Yerkes became a billionaire East Coast Sundeker. Great fun then,
and what a learning experience... right??? Bill Andrews”

Surfwear
Industry, 1970s to Present

After the success of commercial surf trunks
became evident, Mike Doyle recollected, “surf trunk manufacturers started
popping up all over the place -- Ocean Pacific (or OP), Surf Line Hawaii,
Quiksilver, Gotcha, Instinct, Maui and Sons -- and eventually dominated
the casual clothing industry. You can go to any beach resort in the world
now and see men in their seventies wearing baggy, neon-green surf trunks
with bright floral patterns. Before surf trunks caught on, grown men wouldn’t
be seen in something like that.”

From the mid-1960s, surf trunks spread further
and deeper into American life. In 1969, Sundek, in Florida, became the
first major surf trunk manufacturer on the East Coast. 1971 was an important
year, with “Hawaiian Soul“ type trunks as well as Golden Breed popular.
Jim Jenks, formerly with Hansen Surfboards, started Op Sunwear and, marketed
around the brilliant surfing of Pipeline legend Gerry Lopez, the Lightning
Bolt label was born the same year.

In 1978, South African surfer Michael Tomson
found Gotcha, which, along with Quicksilver, became the style leader in
the post 1970s surf trunk era.Notable events in the 1980s include Quiksilver
rider Dan Kwock‘s introduction of neon polka-dot trunks, beginning the
Echo Beach line and ushering in what was called the New Wave fashion swell.
In 1984, Jeff Yokoyama of Maui and Sons incorporated day-glo colors into
his sweatshirt and trunk line. And, in 1986, Op first brought out the lycra
short, patterned off sleek triathlon racing suits. World champion surfer
Tom Curren was the model.

In 1987, Billabong joined Gotcha and Quicksilver
in a triad of imported labels that dominated the American market.

In 1988, 26 years after Ricky Grigg struck
his deal with Jantzen, Quicksilver signed the first-ever million dollar
contract with 2-time world champion Tom Carroll.By 1991, styles tended to go more toward the
baggie type. Lycra-neoprene suits haven’t really caught on. Although the
neoprene-lycra trunks are efficient in the water, “Nobody wants to hang
out on the beach all day in Lycra,” said Bob Hurley of Billabong.

“I’ve spent a lot of time wondering why people
all over the world want to dress like surfers,” concluded Mike Doyle. “Some
sociologist could probably write a doctoral thesis on that subject. But
I think the basic reason is pretty simple: Surfing is fun, and surfwear
helps remind people of all ages that life is supposed to be fun.”

More than funwear, “Trunks are a piece of vital
surfing equipment,” emphasized Bob Hurley, “the thing about trunks is that
a surfer will wear them all day long... Surf trunks are something a surfer
basically lives in.”